Many people are employed in occupations that involve precision work performed at an arms-length distance. Examples of such people are surgeons, dentists, and machinists. Precision work is much more desirably performed if the work area can be significantly magnified as this reduces eye fatigue, improves working posture and increases the accuracy of the job. Moreover, there are people with serious vision deficiencies who must use vision aids in order to view objects that are either close-up or remotely located.
Accordingly, a multitude of prior art devices have been developed which provide magnification of distantly located objects. Many of these devices combine a set of spectacles with a pair of telescopes. In some of these devices, each telescope is attached directly to its respective lens of the spectacles. One such device can be seen by referring to U.S. Pat. No. 4,929,075 entitled OPTICAL VIEWING SYSTEM issued to Eliakim on May 29, 1990.
Other prior art devices have telescopic lens assemblies that are pivotally attached to the spectacle frame. An example of such a device is disclosed in U.S. Design Pat. No. 296,337 entitled DENTAL BINOCULARS issued to Caplan on Jun. 21, 1988. In this patent, a pair of telescopes are supported in a frame that is pivotally connected to a spectacle frame by some type of hinge arrangement. When the user wishes to view an object through the telescopes, the user flips the telescopes down in front of the lenses. When the user wishes to view conventionally through the spectacles, the telescopes are flipped up and away from the lenses.
A problem associated with devices employing pivoting telescopic lens assemblies is that every time the telescopes are flipped-down into position, the user must refocus each of the telescopes. This is because these prior art devices have no way of accurately placing the telescopic lens assembly in the same position every time the lenses are flipped down.
This can be quite an inconvenience especially if the user happens to be a surgeon or dentist. In this situation, the surgeon or dentist must take his attention off the procedure being performed and refocus the telescopes or try to pivot the telescopes back into the same position as before. This is especially inconvenient, in procedures where the surgeon or dentist is repeatedly flipping the telescope assembly up and down to look between the work area and the equipment and/or nurses.
Another problem associated with pivoting telescope assemblies relates to the difficulty users encounter when trying to look around the telescope assembly when it is flipped down in the operative position. In particular, the support frames that are used to mount the telescopes in prior art designs, tend to obstruct a portion of the spectacle lenses. Moreover, the prior art support frames centrally position the telescopes in front of the spectacle lenses when the telescopic lens assembly is in the flipped-down, operative position. Thus, if the user wishes to look conventionally through the spectacles, the user must flip up the spectacles to the non-operative position.
Thus, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved optical spectacle device that employs a pivoting telescopic lens assembly that can be repeatedly flipped down into precisely the same operative position thereby eliminating the need to refocus each of the telescopes.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide an optical spectacle device which allows a user to look over the telescopic lens assembly when it is flipped down in the operative position.